Featured cherub of the week is Tucker Von Hatten. Tucker is the son of Rachel and Billy and is a younger brother to Bennett.
Rachel had this to share about Tucker, “Our youngest son was diagnosed with CDH when I was 35 weeks pregnant. Tucker Lee Von Hatten was born on 5/20/16 at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and quickly intubated and transferred down several hallways to St. Louis Children’s Hospital NICU. He had his repair surgery at 4 days old. After his repair we experienced the many highs and lows of a CDHer in the NICU. He was extubated 3 times before it was successful and after 28 days we finally made it home. We thought our journey with CDH was over until December 2016 when he contracted RSV at 7 months old. This put him back in the hospital and back on a ventilator. While in the hospital, Tucker started rejecting his feeds and ended up having a second surgery to repair a bowel obstruction. In total we spent an additional 18 days in the hospital, which included his first Christmas and New Year’s.
Since then things have been more quiet with just a few weekend stays and ER visits for non-surgical bowel obstructions, a case of pneumonia and several different viruses.
We always wanted to give back to the CDH community that has supported us in our journey, so on 5/20/17 we celebrated Tucker’s first birthday by hosting Tucker’s Trek Walk for CDH. It was a great success and we were able to donate $4000 to CHERUBS. We followed it up with a 2nd Tucker’s Trek last year, raising $6000 in 2018.
This year we are joining forces with another CDH family in our community and hosting the 3rd annual Tucker’s Trek 5K for CDH Awareness on June 1st, 2019.”
Facebook Event Page for Tucker’s Trek 5K for CDH Awareness: https://www.facebook.com/events/411345163007558/
